“Something is better than nothing. Progress not perfection.” This has been my mantra for the past 2 years. And it’s taken me a long time to get here, and fully be able to believe that. I’ve applied this to all areas of my life, but today especially I’ve been thinking of it more in terms of church. I’m already afraid this can go off on many tangents, so I will try to keep it brief.

As with most people, I have a complicated relationship with “The Church.” There were a couple periods in college when I took a break from church for a few months at a time, but generally have been a consistent church-goer my whole life, even when I lived in Spain. But a few years ago that changed. It wasn’t really an intentional or conscious change, it just sort of happened that I quit going, and I think it was something that had been building without me fully realizing. I still went to church on holidays with my family, but even that became unbearable once the pandemic hit.

I have not rejected God or Jesus, I have rejected The Church. And it’s not to say this is forever, it’s just until I can once again sit in a church and feel anything other than mounting anger during a sermon.

A former pastor of mine wrote a blog post recently, and tries to show a distinction between being hurt by The Church or in The Church, but as a friend I discussed it with so concisely put it, “Either way, there’s still hurt.” He says it’s the people in The Church that hurt people, but in the same breath says that The Church is the people. Even if I can get past that not making any sense to me, he goes on to compare people being hurt in The Church to people being hurt in the world of dating. He says we don’t just reject dating when someone hurts us, we recognize that the person is who hurt us, and get back on the horse and try again. Except that’s not exactly true.

I’m 36, single, and have been for just shy of a decade now. I go through (brief) phases where I try to “get back on the horse” and see what’s out there, but eventually I feel burned and/or disillusioned again, remember why I gave it up in the first place, and decide I’ve got legs to walk, maybe I don’t need a horse anyway. My friend also said that there’s a lot of trauma around the whole institution of dating for her and what it’s done to her, not just individual people, but person, after person, after person, within that institution. And I think The Church is the same way. When people are saying they are hurt by The Church, in my experience it’s not just a one-off thing - it’s hurt after hurt after hurt. At some point you have to say no to the trauma. At least for a while.

And I think that’s what most of us who are leaving* The Church are doing. Because it is the people, but it is also the entire institution - an institution that continues to weaponize scripture, to tell certain groups that they are less than for being who they were created to be, and that continually focuses on its own self-interests instead of loving its neighbors.

For a while I felt bad about not going to church anymore. I tried to make myself go, but it ended up doing more harm than good. I’ve spent countless therapy sessions - and thus countless dollars - undoing many of the hurts caused in/by The Church, and I think spiritually I’m in a better place than I ever have been.

“Something is better than nothing…” At church it always seemed it was all or nothing, something didn’t count. I wasn’t hearing God when I prayed? It’s because I wasn’t praying enough, or being faithful enough, or believing enough (all things I’ve been told - even when, for a weird couple months in college, praying literally was all I was doing, aside from attending classes, and performing basic functions needed to survive). Now instead of beating myself up over not opening my Bible every morning, or going to all the Bible studies and small groups, or praying “enough,” as I was told I needed to do in church, I celebrate the moments I get to seek God through nature, or dancing in my shed to some random dj, or meeting up with fellow Christians I don’t attend church with. I refuse to feel shame for not doing something I wasn’t wired for. I’m still loving Jesus and recognizing his presence in my daily life, probably even more so now, in these small, non-prescribed ways. I haven’t thrown in the towel completely, I’m doing something; I’m doing what I have the capacity for right now; I’m doing what I can, with what I have, where I am.

“…Progress not perfection.” As the pastor pointed out in his blog - and I’ve had pointed out to me every Sunday and Wednesday night at church - we are all sinful and fallible people. But we are also loved, and treasured, and valued! Instead of focusing on the former, as has been hammered into me for decades by The Church, I’m starting to see and hear, and experience, the latter. I’m not fully there yet because it takes a long time to undo decades of hurt, but I’m trying, clinging onto that hope for dear life. Before, I felt like I had to strive for perfection, to be as good as Jesus, and while I understand the sentiment, it has only led me to trauma and shame because it is unattainable, and continually failing at something is bound to get to you eventually. So now my goal is simply progress; to do better today than yesterday; to learn from my mistakes and grow; to keep moving forward. I want to celebrate the attempts. I will never be perfect and holy like Jesus, but I can strive to be more like him, and it is perfectly normal when I fall short.

I know many people who have left The Church over the years because of hurt - both by and in, and again, not just one specific hurt, a well of hurt that deepens over the years - but the vast majority of those people are still seeking. They haven’t left God or Jesus, they have left the trauma. Some will come back, some might not, but just as Jesus always gave people space to come to him instead of forcing or manipulating or coercing them (thanks for the Voxer Bible lesson, Brooke!), my hope is that The Church would do the same.

*I use the term “leaving” loosely because for some of us, our definition of what church is has been changing, and what we’re “leaving” is the current notion of church…but that’s another discussion for another day.